"Are You Hungry?" He Would Answer, "No." After A
Toilsome Journey, And No Supper At The End:
"Would you like to eat?"
"No." But let an ostrich or a deer come in sight, and he could not
live another minute without food!
Another proof to Yantiwau of my
incapacity was the fact that when my matches were all used I could
not light the fire. He, by rubbing a blunt-pointed hard stick in a
groove of soft wood, could cause such a friction that the dust would
speedily ignite, and set fire to the dry twigs which he was so clever
in collecting. Although such a simple process to the Indian, I never
met a white man who could use the firesticks with effect.
Sitting by the camp-fire in the stillness of evening, my guide would
draw attention to a shooting star. "Look! That is a bad witch
doctor," he would say. "Did you notice he went to the west? Well, the
Toothlis live there. He has gone for vengeance!"
The wide palm plains are almost uninhabited; I have journeyed eighty
miles without sighting human being or wigwam. In the rainy season the
trees stand out of a sea-like expanse of steaming water, and one may
wade through this for twenty miles without finding a dry place for
bivouac. Ant hills, ten and fifteen feet high, with dome-shaped
roofs, dot the wild waste like pigmy houses, and sometimes they are
the only dry land found to rest on. The horses flounder through the
mire, or sink up to the belly in slime, while clouds of flies make
the life of man and beast a living death. Keys rust in the pocket,
and boots mildew in a day. At other seasons, as I know by painful
experience, the hard-baked ground is cracked up into fissures, and
not a drop of water is to be found in a three days' journey. The
miserable savages either sit in utter dejection on logs of wood or
tree roots, viewing the watery expanse, or roam the country in search
of yingmin (water).
Whereas the Caingwas may be described as inoffensive Indians, the
inhabitants of the Chaco are savages, hostile to the white man, who
only here and there, with their permission, has settled on the river
bank. Generally a people of fine physique and iron constitution, free
from disease of any kind, they are swept into eternity in an
incredibly short space of time if civilized diseases are
introduced. Even the milder ones, such as measles, decimate a whole
tribe; and I have known communities swept away as autumn leaves in a
strong breeze with the grippe. I was informed that the hospital
authorities at Asuncion gave them the cast-off fever clothing of
their patients during an epidemic to sweep them off the face of the
earth!
The Indians have been ill-treated from the beginning. Darwin relates
that, in their eagerness to exterminate the red men, the Argentine
troops have pursued them for three days without food. On the frontier
they are killed in hundreds; by submitting to the white man they die
in thousands. Latin civilization is more terrible to them than war.
Sad to state, their only hope is to fight, and this the savage
affirms he will do for ever and ever.
Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay, ordered every Indian found - man,
woman or child - to be put to death! Lopez, a later ruler, took sport
in hunting Indians like deer. We are told that on one occasion he was
so successful as to kill forty-eight! The children he captured and
sold into slavery at fifteen and twenty dollars each. The white
settler considers himself very brave if he kills the savage with a
rifle sighted at five hundred yards, while well out of range of the
Indians' arrows, and I have known them shot just "for fun"! The
Indians retaliate by cutting off the heels of their white captives,
or leaving them, in statu naturae, bound with thongs on an
anthill; and a more terrible death could not be devised by even the
inquisitor, Torquemada, of everlasting execration. The Indian is hard
and cruel, indifferent to pain in himself or others. A serpent may
sting a comrade, and he takes no notice; but let one find food and
there is a general scamper to the spot. The Chaco savage is barbarous
in the extreme. The slain enemies are often eaten, and the bones
burnt and scattered over their food. The children of enemies are
traded off to other tribes for more food.
The Chaco Indian is a born warrior. Sad to say, his only hope is to
fight against the Latin paleface.
Most of us have at times been able to detect a peculiar aroma in the
negro. The keen-scented savage detects that something in us, and we
"smell" to them. Even I, Big Cactus Red Mouth, was not declared
free from a subtle odor, although I washed so often that they
wondered my skin did not come off. They never wash, and in damp
weather the dirt peels from them in cakes. Of course they don't
smell!
When a man or woman is, through age, no longer capable of looking
after the needs of the body, a shallow grave is dug, the aged one
doubled up until the knees are pressed into the hollow cheeks, and
the back is broken. This terrible work done, the undesired one is
dragged by one leg to the open tomb. Sometimes the face and whole
body is so mangled, by being pulled through thorns and over uneven
ground, that it is not recognizable, and the nose has at times been
actually torn off. While sometimes still alive, the body is covered
up with mother earth. Frequently the grave is so shallow that the
matted hair may be seen coming out at the top. The burial is
generally made near a wood, and, if passible, under the holy wood
tree, which, in their judgment, has great influence with evil
spirits.
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